(Originally published on September 22, 2008 on The Next Stage)

On August 10, 2008, in the wee small hours of the morning, a propane station blew up in Toronto. The video and the information was all over the internet long before it reached the mainstream media, even Television.

Local blogger Lorraine Murphy, otherwise known as Raincoaster, was awake that night, and saw the first reports about the explosion coming in on her Twitter feed. She immediately blogged about it, linking to videos, photos, and other blogs. Her blog ratings for that post were very soon #1 on Google.

Lorraine Murphy is a professional blogger here in Vancouver. Her blogs include teenymanolo.com, ayyyy.com (link blogging), The Fearless City project, and, of course, Raincoaster. She is also a social media consultant, and teaches a workshop called Pimp My Blog (details at the end) on how to grow your readership in a meaningful way. She defines meaningful connections as “linking to you, reading you, leaving comments, or recommending you to their friends.”

She shared some of her tips with me, in this, the third of my three-part series on blogging.

1. Be aware of different ways for people to access your blog.
You can physically go to the website and read the blog, you can subscribe to the blog through RSS readers, or by email updates (Feedburner can help you to write the code needed to create this widget for your blog, if you don’t already have it). The more of those options you can make available to people, the more people you can get to read your blog.

2. Blogrolling:
Blogrolling is still happening, but it is not as popular as it used to be. Blogrolling is kind of like having a links page on your website—you put your favorite blogs on your blogroll, and hopefully, those to whom you are linking, put you on theirs. “In addition to putting someone on your blogroll, also write a post about it,” is Murphy’s big tip about blogrolling. It gives them an extra boost.

3. Linking to other blogs in your posts
Linking and quoting other blog posts is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. Murphy warns against linking to Wikipedia or corporate websites or BoingBoing. Your link love will go unrequited–they are too big to care too much about linking to you. Linking to other bloggers is going to get the attention of individual bloggers and draw them to your site as they check trackbacks.

4. Commenting on other blogs:
Probably the best way to create a following is to post high-quality, appropriate comments on blogs that you are reading. “Add value or add amusement,” Murphy says. Don’t forget to leave your name and the URL of your blog so that they can follow you back to your blog.

5. Write often, and write well.
“Keep it short,” Murphy says, “just get it out there!” She recommends 100-200 words per blog post, and be sure to include at least one image. “It’s a multi-media platform—use multimedia!” Use keywords, but not too many—Wordpress will only allow 10-12 keywords and categories per post. Write about only one thing in your post. Write at least one blog post per week, three is optimal.

6. Include buttons on your site to connect with social networking
Buttons for Facebook, Digg, stumbleupon, del.icio.us,technorati, feedburner, and fark, right on your website, will make it easier for people who’ve read your post to share it with their network if they really like it. If you have a WordPress or Blogger blog, this feature is built in, but if you are running your own show, installing these buttons could help increase your readership. “It’s good to enable people to follow you around,” says Murphy. But she also reflects that a very small percentage of her readership comes from hits off of Twitter or Facebook.

7. Know your blogging platforms
Tumblr is a new blogging platform, similar to WordPress or Blogger. It’s pretty slick, but unlike WordPress or Blogger, it doesn’t allow you to connect with people off of Tumblr. So your audience potential is smaller. The WordPress.com platform is probably the strongest blogging platform available, and is probably the best in terms of Search Engine Optimization.

8. Add your blog URL to your email signature
”You wouldn’t think that it would have that much pull, but it really does,” says Murphy.

Pimp My Blog takes place on Saturday, September 27, 10 am—2 pm, at  Tradeworks Training Society, 87 E Pender St. The course costs $150, which includes all materials, including computers. Email [email protected] to register.